Oh my, life has been far too busy lately. I've only had time for small bits of art-between-the-gaps, and am aching for more time to work on projects! Soon, soon ...
In the meantime, I thought I'd write about a design I started work on earlier this year. It began as a page in one of my sketchbooks, drawn with a yellow paint pen. The paper and the paint pen didn't get along too well, so the paper has been roughed up pretty good. But I liked the design and the bright yellow colour, so I decided to scan it into my computer and see what I could do with it.
After scanning, I opened the image in Photoshop and tidied it up a bit to flatten out the rough spots. Then I switched to Illustrator and vectorised it (i.e. converted the image from pixels to smooth, graphic lines). I adjusted the settings to give me a clean two-colour rendition of the original hand drawn version.
The next step was to turn it into a repeating pattern. This step took a fair bit of playing around - trying to create an even, yet random-looking distribution of the motifs across the pattern. The version that is shown below appeared on the front page of this website when I launched :)
I'm not entirely sure if it's finished yet. I might try a bit more fiddling with the distribution / tile size so that the repeat is less obvious. I'm also thinking about adding some texture back in for extra interest. I guess that will depend on what I want to use the pattern for ...
I love converting my work into patterns like this, even though the extra steps from the original piece through to a repeat design can sometimes feel arduous! But I'm still learning, and I'm sure it will become easier over time as I create repeating patterns for textiles on a regular basis.